Consumers are showing preference and demand for new ways to eat and drink their meals. In response to this demand, suppliers of beverages and snack foods, for example, have developed new ways of packaging and marketing these items together in a “bundled” package as a convenient meal option for consumers. This allows consumers the convenience of purchasing and handling an integrated package including both a snack item and beverage and provides consumers with convenient “grab and go” portability of their meals. This packaging arrangement also provides significant advantages to the beverage and snack food suppliers as well since it permits them to market newer or less-preferred brands to consumers in a “bundled” package with the supplier's stronger brands. In this way, the beverage and snack food suppliers are able to introduce newer products to the market with less risk and also increase sales of weaker brands by relying on the market strength and consumer desirability of the supplier's stronger brands.
In the past, suppliers have “bundled” snack food and beverage items together by shrink-wrapping, taping or otherwise attaching or packaging the snack food item to the outside of the beverage container. However, this method of packaging presents a significant drawback as it oftentimes leaves fragile snack items susceptible to damage during packaging, transport and distribution of the “bundled” package from the supplier to consumer. Many snacks, such as snack bars, are conventionally packaged inside of a flexible wrapper for such things as protection from environmental factors. This wrapper, however, offers little to no protection in subsequent packaging, transport and distribution of the “bundled” package, and therefore requires a secondary package made of paperboard, corrugated or other packaging processes and materials to protect it. This requires additional equipment, materials and labor which add cost to the product and make the packaging process inefficient.
In the past, other types of “bundled” packages have been offered to consumers as well. For example, suppliers have offered market premiums and various other articles in nested relationship within a recess formed in a wall of a container. In these instances, the container recess is defined by recess walls and the article may be glued or loosely placed within the recess and covered with a transparent film so as to secure and/or protect the item within the recess. However, known configurations of recesses which completely enclose the item and/or the use of a covering film over the item present a significant drawback as the item is typically obscured by shadows within the recess, or condensation or glare which occurs on the film, and so cannot be easily seen by the consumer. Also, such recesses and covering films complicate access and dislodgement of the article by the consumer and typically require hand assembly of the “bundled” package which adds to the cost of the assembled package.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved package system for combining an article and a container in an integrated package with the article secured in nested relationship within a recess of the container.